


here you are with your faith

by redandgold



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, M/M, pls to suspend realism and knowledge, rock falls everyone dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 14:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16199711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: "David, I don't think - ""What happened in Manchester?"Iker clicks off the radio."It's gone," he says.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brampersandon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brampersandon/gifts).



> UHHH so I literally can't find Caitlin's original prompt on tumblr but joke's on her I saved it IMMEDIATELY in a google doc upon receiving it and so here it is in full:
> 
> I WISH YOU WOULD WRITE THE FIC WHERE BECKS DOESN'T DIE IMMEDIATELY IN THE APOCALYPSE BUT IS STUCK IN MADRID FAR FROM ALL HIS M8S AND HAS TO TEAM UP WITH IKER TO TRY TO GET BACK HOME he can die in the process if you want i know what your kinks are
> 
> five months later u get... this. I hope you like it caitwin my loff and I hope it makes u feel a lil better this week. <3
> 
> PLEASE suspend all of your scientific, engineering, mechanical, medical, and other assorted knowledges because I know some things don't make sense and also I don't understand physics! listen things happen because of NARRATIVE! If I could enjoy the King's Speech despite all the historical inaccuracies then U CAN TOO :***
> 
> Thanks to [Shawon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi) for betaing as always :**
> 
> I did make a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/wellcharted/playlist/0P1Zo1XvMAZ8T9XDqO1UJD?si=ZusVBbaJTGKuXcYto6ySgQ) but it's kinda haphazard and meant for different parts... basically play 2+2=5 when u get to the 'England' bit and you're good

 

 

The world ends.

 

*

 

Well. It doesn't quite.

 

*

 

David blinks past the ash and tries to figure out where he is - Madrid, he knows, but he's found out that there are a million winding streets through the city, each as strange and unmappable as the next. It isn't Manchester where every corner has been explored. Isn't Manchester where he's snuck down back-alleys to get away from the paps, rounded corners of dubious roads like he was home.

Home. Gary. Manchester. God.

Shut up. Shut up.

He pushes himself to his feet and looks around. It's Sunday, no game, and he'd just been searching for some kind of fancy street that sold tea. This must be one of them, only there isn't a street. Where once people walked there's a gaping hole that looks straight down through the earth, as if you could see to the other side.

He scrambles back from the edge and starts running in the other direction. Keeps running.

 

*

 

"Hello?"

"David?"

There's this moment when Iker says his name. He's been saying it for a year and it still throws David off, the vowels stressed differently and the lilt. David looks down at his shoes and up again and puts the grin back on his face.

"God. Okay. Let me in, will you?"

Iker opens the door a crack wider and David squeezes past. He hasn't needed an invitation ever since they crashed through it together, a tussle of limbs and improbably quiet kisses, David feeling vaguely guilty about something he couldn't put his finger on.

That must have been - it wasn't all that long ago and it's still an age. Another lifetime. Christ, David thinks. I nearly died today.

Iker's staring at him strange. "Do you know what happened?" he asks, gesturing to his television. "I tried to turn it on but the power's out. And there's no signal on my phone."

David shakes his head. Drops onto Iker's sofa and laces his fingers together. "Signal's out everywhere," he says. He'd scrambled through the city on the way back and anything that hadn't disappeared was covered in fine dust. "How about your landline, is that working?"

Iker gives him a little smile. "Who are you going to call?"

Someone. Anyone. Gary. Shut up. David stuffs the name down his throat and blinks up at Iker.

"I was in Barrio de Salamanca. Half of it's gone."

"What do you mean _gone_?"

"I mean," David says, biting his lip, "I mean not there anymore. Just. Wrecked. Like we're in a war movie."

He realises he's shaking, all of him. His shoes clack against the wooden parquet. One cuff of his jeans is higher than the other, he thinks, looking down. Iker sits down besides him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

The sirens go off.

David's seen one of these before, in a dusty corner of a Barcelona museum someone had dragged him to. They're shaped like a cone, tapering into a wider mouth, scattered around buildings left over from the civil war. He didn't know they still worked.

Iker says something in Spanish, soft under his breath and drowned out by the noise. His hand is still on David's shoulder, digging into David's flesh so hard he's going to leave marks. Christ. The siren goes on and on and on. Let this just be Madrid, David finds himself praying. Whatever this is. Don't touch the rest of the world.

"Hey," Iker says.

He's taken his hand away. David opens his eyes, hadn't even realised he'd closed them. The siren has faded into a low whine that gets steadily weaker. Iker's rummaging through a drawer; there's a thin, garbled voice coming from inside.

"Portable radio," Iker laughs. Almost like relief. "I forgot I had this. Or that it worked."

He turns the volume up. The sharp bursts of static slowly segue into something more intelligible. David's Spanish isn't the greatest - Iker reminds him of that every day - but he can make certain things out, like _war_ and _stay inside_ and then a list of cities: New York, Brussels, Kuala Lumpur, Munich, Shanghai, Manchester.

David feels his skin go cold.

The list of cities is going on. David doesn't hear anything after that. He looks at Iker, who's looking at him, perfectly seriously. It's the kind of expression he has before the start of a game. It's the kind of expression David hates him for, particularly in this moment, here.

"What was that about," he says, trying to sound lighthearted even though he knows Iker sees straight through him. It makes a difference, or something.

"David," Iker says. He looks almost like a statue in the afternoon light. It glints off his cheekbones, ears, the bridge of his nose.

"Iker."

"David, I don't think - "

"What happened in Manchester?"

Iker clicks off the radio.

"It's gone," he says.

 

*

 

David doesn't sleep. It's not for lack of trying; Iker gives him the whole bed and he kicks out, burrows under the sheets, squeezes his eyes shut so hard that his head starts to hurt. None of it helps. Everything reminds him of something. The dark room and Scholesy's batcave, the pillows and the fight the six of them had once, piling into the room smacking each other and laughing. He curls up and remembers how he'd told the documentary-makers about cuddling up with Gary, how they'd all given both of them so much stick after that. Gary means United means Manchester means.

Home. Something. Shut up. You are home. You are here.

There is some of Madrid standing, still; there are streets with houses and people inside, there is half of Cibeles, or so the radio had squawked. There are roads that spread from the centre all the way out to the rest of Spain, and some of those remain, even if the airport is rubble and ash. David looks out of the window to watch the dawn and the sun hits the stone at the same angle it does every day.

There are some standing, still. A man in a cap pulled low over his head, lips pursed in a whistle, sweeping dust off the road. His knuckles are white as they grip the handle of the broom.

 

*

 

The reports seep through with signal breakdowns and interference, less regular than the air strikes overhead. Half the world at war with the other half - threats of more nuclear bombs - toxic gas being developed? - food shortage. Countries isolated. The end is nigh. David strains for any news from England, taps at the phone in hope, even though the satellites have long come crashing down.

They move into the bunker built below Iker's house. What the hell, David says. Iker shrugs: came with the house. It's a basement, really, but the previous owners put metal into the walls and now the paint doesn't flake with each distant bombardment. You must've had some paranoid previous owners, David says. Don't pretend you aren't glad for it, Iker laughs.

London vanishes one day. The sprawling parks of his boyhood, his parents' house in Chingford, the A110 his dad would drive up on to get him to practice. Leveled, Iker says, even though it doesn't make sense. It's so big, David says. It takes an hour to drive from one end to the other. They have derbies within London, it's that big.

They say it again tomorrow, as if they knew David wouldn't believe it. Gone in a firestorm. David spends the whole day stacking and re-stacking the tinned food they'd found in the supermarket before the lockdown, Iker watching him.

Iker checks on his parents. They live in the next neighbourhood and David sits on the sofa in the basement, twiddling his thumbs, wishing he'd gone too. When Iker comes back down the stairs David breathes out and grins.

"They're fine," Iker says, grins back, happier than he wants to let on. "And I saw them working on the wires, so maybe we will have a landline connection soon."

David opens his mouth, wanting to say something. _Why are letting me stay here. Why are you still with me. Why aren't you checking on anyone else. Why don't you go somewhere -_

Iker leans down and presses his forehead against David's, brings a hand to cup the side of his face. "Whatever you are going to say," he murmurs, his breath hot against David's skin, "don't."

David arches into the kiss, tilts his chin up, slides his fingers through Iker's hair. When they fuck it's shuddering and breathless and it feels like they're both reaching for something, except neither of them realise what.

They know each other, is all David can think afterwards. They know each other, and that is nothing, everything.

 

*

 

The phone rings. David flinches at the sound, his fingers frozen hovering above the shirts he was folding. In the same split second Iker has dived across the sofa and picked up the phone. David thinks of him standing in front of a goal, leaping in much the same way - a singular perfect arc - clawing the ball off the line.

He doesn't tell Iker this. Iker has a brief conversation in rapid Spanish then hits the switch-hook and offers the handset to him.

"Quickly," he says. "They don't know how long it will last."

David picks up the handset and dials two numbers from memory.

The first: a dial tone. Perfectly flat. David probably knew someone once who could have told him the exact musical note. He waits for someone to say in that smooth RP-accent _the number you have called is not available_ , but even that doesn't exist anymore.

The second: a shock of silence, two seconds. Then, extraordinarily, ringing. No, David thinks, don't do this. Don't give me this when I know it doesn't -

"Hello," says Gary Neville.

David draws a long breath. If someone were to ask him how he was feeling he wouldn't be able to say.

"Gaz, it's - "

"Becks? Christ, we'd heard nothing except Madrid had been hit - "

" _We?_ Is everyone okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, in a way, don't know about this gas thing - "

"What gas thing? Gaz - "

"Are you okay? Tried to call but you didn't pick up. Thought - "

"I'm fine, I'm at Iker's, we're fine, how are you still alive, how - "

"I don't know. Lucky. Listen, Becks, you've got to stay alive. You and Iker, yeah? Stay inside. Stay alive. You've got to - "

 

*

 

David sits alone long after the line gets cut. Sits and looks at the blank television screen opposite him. He's aware of Iker's existence in his peripheral vision, walking back and forth, but doesn't turn his head. Just sits.

Gary's alive, at least some of them are. He hasn't heard another English accent since it started. A Northern one. United means Manchester means -

"I've got to go," David says at last.

Iker folds his arms and tilts his head.

"Really."

David blinks at him. Iker's grinning, a slow, one-sided curve up his face.

"Eh?"

"It took you that long to decide?"

Iker toes a black haversack across the floor. The zip's undone. David peers inside; there're his jerseys, first aid kit, bottles of water. "You can repack it later," Iker says, sheepish. "I know I must have all your colours mixed up."

David doesn't know if the sound that comes out of his throat is laughter or love. "You're too good," he says, feeling stupid, feeling suddenly like he's never deserved any of the people in his life.

Iker shrugs. "That is true. But enough about my goalkeeping abilities."

"Fuck off."

They haven't played football in five months and five days.

David rests his palms against the fabric of the seat. "What are you going to do," he asks without asking. He isn't arrogant enough to assume that Iker can't live without him, but being cooped up in a square room alone was no way to survive.

Iker reaches around a table and puts a second black haversack on the floor.

"I'm coming with you," he says. Tilts his head to the side as if to add: _of course._

 

*

 

There are a hundred reasons they shouldn't go. David lists them all out, meticulously, in a Kraft paper notebook with rounded edges that fits into his hand.

  1. _We might die._



Iker throws a pair of goalkeeper gloves into his haversack. Neither of them mention this.

  1. _Gary might not be alive by the time we get there._



In the afternoon they scuttle to the garage. The bombings are statistically less likely from two to four, just because it's easiest to see them coming. David blinks as he emerges from the basement. The wall at the backyard has been knocked clean through and the light blinds him for seconds, before he feels Iker's reassuring hand on his shoulder.

The neighbours - the man sweeping the street - the street - most of that's gone. Rubble that aches with a story it can't tell.

  1. _We'll run out of food halfway through._



Somehow two of David's cars are still intact. Fuck me, David says; if you want, Iker laughs. They load up the Renault. It's less conspicuous than the Porsche, which will be gone the moment they fall asleep.

"I've always wanted a Porsche," says Iker, and David can't tell if he's joking or not.

  1. _We might get into a fight._



They decide to go the same day; there's no point hanging around, and anyway the time they leave won't make a difference. Iker's found an old Eurorail map crammed into one of the bookshelves and they plot a route on it, hoping that some of the roads are still there.

David draws a thin red line across the Channel.

"Do you think," he starts, then stops himself.

"Maybe we will find a plane," Iker shrugs.

 

*

 

CHECKLIST:  
Extra petrol from the Porsche  
Canned food - 2wks  
Passports (?)  
Water - 2wks  
Map  
Clothes - ~~for 2wks~~ a few sets  
First aid kit  
Reading material (?)  
Weapons (?)

 

*

 

It takes them a while to get to the E-5, given the number of streets that don't exist anymore. The Santiago Bernabeu is in the direction they're headed and David pauses at a junction even if the lights don't work anymore. Turns over to look at Iker, who's staring ahead resolutely.

He almost asks.

They take the road to the right instead, winding through Colina till they've cleared the city. Most of the highways overhead have crumbled; dour concrete pillars remain, half-formed fingers clawing at the sky; shells of burnt-out cars litter the ground like carcasses.

 

*

 

Thrice they're forced off the road because of gaping craters, faint wisps of smoke still spiraling above one. The streets are better away from the urban centres. No one wants to bomb corn, Iker says.

It's the first time he speaks, just outside of Vitoria-Gasteiz and four hours from Madrid. His mouth moves as if he isn't aware that words are coming out.

"Iker," David says, gently and without reproach, "do you want to go home?"

He always forgets this about Iker, grave and level-headed, with just the right sense of humour that you wouldn't _worry_ for him, but you wouldn't realise he had grown old too fast, either. What is he, now - twenty-four? - driving to the edge of a country that doesn't exist anymore, away from a city that had been all he'd known.

David doesn't know what he'd have done at twenty-four. But then he wouldn't have needed to; Manchester was an island, and someone had always known what to do.

"No," Iker says presently, without blinking. His voice is calm as the surface of a pond. "No, I've - I chose this. This is important." He flicks his eyes to David, and David can't make out what he's actually thinking. "You are important."

"I'm not," David says automatically.

He isn't. The thing about the not-quite-ending of the world - it strips away everything that might once have mattered, not to you but the people around you. No one's going to think of him as David Beckham, Superstar Model from now on, and that's the way he'd always wanted it to be. A face as a face.

"To me," Iker says. "All of you. How stupid you are. How kind you are."

David drags his knuckles across his thigh, knee to hip bone. Presses the crescent moon of his thumbnail into the flesh of his index finger where the middle joint is.

"Is this a kindness?"

Iker tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, achingly familiar.

 

*

 

There's a thin sheen of haze above the ground when they get nearer to Bilbao. David can make out the shadows of empty houses on the horizon. They hadn't heard anything about the rest of Spain but there was still something eerie about it all, silent, threatening.

The trees along the road are blackened and shrivelled in a way that David's only seen in old black-and-white news reports. He gets a curled-up feeling in his stomach; he thinks that Manchester might look the same way.

"We have to get out of here," he says.

Iker turns the wheel. They ghost through Eibar, of which nothing remains, and the sun is hanging low by the time San Sebastián slides into view.

David's memories of the beach are hazy at best. He'd never lived in a place that allowed for them; rivers were about as close as he got, the murky roiling of the Thames or the flat reflection of the Irwell. Once or twice he'd gone to Brighton with his family and they'd spent the whole day with sand between their toes, eating ice cream, cycling towards the sunset.

San Sebastián is not Brighton in any way. Too warm. Too vast. Too blue. There are craters where houses used to be, where the edge of the sand used to meet the water, and there isn't a soul in sight. Iker steers them along the beach quietly. David says stop.

He steps out of the car and takes his shoes off. One, two. Curls his toes into the sand. The horizon stretches out before him like nothing ever happened to the world. It's like Spain, he thinks languidly, Spain with its beautiful people and beautiful culture and beautiful orange groves. None of it is the same as the grit of brick buildings, the greasiness of a chippie getting into his hair.

Iker gets out of the car and starts running towards the horizon. Arms outstretched, shirt untucked and trailing out behind him. "Wait up," David calls, like an old man, but Iker doesn't hear him or pretends not to. Keeps running until he hits the water and then he sinks to his knees. Sinks to his knees in the sea. His arms are still wide and he's laughing, won't stop laughing, just loud and full and no one to hear him for miles.

It shifts something inside David, something he didn't even know was stuck. Suddenly his whole chest is loose and he takes a deep lungful of air and runs, laughs, as loud as Iker, as uncaring as the world. He runs until he tumbles into Iker and the sea and they roll in the water, screaming like boys young again.

Water everywhere, sand everywhere, Iker breathing David's name into his ear between gasps, David kissing Iker again and again, fingers curled around his throat. Water and sand and the whole - the whole bloody place of it all, the whole bloody world, here.

Here. Their breathing stills. Here they are, all that's left.

David gets up. The sound of the waves on shore fills his ears. Water drips from the edge of his fingers, swallowed by the crests of seafoam.

"I suppose we should get some rest," he says, not trusting himself to say anything else. Iker looks at him impassively, no longer laughing.

 

*

 

They find a garage, half-bombed in, the dust of concrete settling like powdered snow on the car wrecks lined up in neat rows. The best disguise is in a forest, David says. Iker snorts. Aren't you forgetting some of it?

Iker falls asleep quick - stretches out on the backseat, rests his head on David's lap, closes his eyes. He looks younger when he's sleeping; the sternness of his manner disappears. His shoulders slope.

David tangles fingers in Iker's hair and looks out of the window. There are bright spots of orange in the distance, intermittent. Curling into the sky like mushrooms, bathing the darkness with hues of deep red. It reminds him of Guy Fawkes' Day. They'd climb up Primrose Hill to watch the fireworks blooming in the air above London. Shimmering, liquid silver; flowers that vanished as quickly as they came.

 

*

 

  1. _We might get run off the road and end up dying in a ditch somewhere._
  2. _Whatever the poison gas thing was doesn't sound good._
  3. _We might not come back._



 

*

 

He dreams of Manchester - not the one today or the one of five months ago, but the one at the turn of the nineties. Exciting. Terrifying. Desolate. Rampant. Beautiful. Raw. Real.

It's sickly-coloured buses on half-paved streets. It's orange work netting across train tracks, Piccadilly a jam of irate kids in coats too big for them. The curve of the Hacienda, Affleck's Palace Est. 1981, Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Liam Gallagher's nasal drawl. Gang violence in the streets amidst the rubble of wrecking balls. Council estates with white spray-paint on the concrete: _pigs get the fuck outside._ Arndale. The Metrolink, Castlefield, Corrie.

And, always, it's football. Living and breathing. Sir Alex. The Treble. Bloody hell. Gary. Real life is paler, duller, and less prone to unexpected delirium.

All of this feeds into David in a way he can't fathom, subconsciously, stupidly. The way that any child growing up is fed into. Where you are becomes who you are; but more, he thinks, in cities that are alive.

 

*

 

"David," Iker's whispering into his ear. _Dah-veed_. "We must go."

"What?"

"People."

"Where?"

"You can hear them."

Iker nods towards the front of the car. David raises his head and squints; at first it's too dark to see anything, but gradually he becomes aware of a couple of shadowy figures just outside the garage, heads and arms. Small, scuffling noises. It's impossible to tell from here who they are or what they want. Whether they're armed.

"Maybe they own the garage."

"Do you want to take that chance?"

Shit. _Shit._ San Sebastian must have been one of the first places to be deserted, a resort town shorn of tourists and too close to the border to be all safe. Anyone still here wasn't here for a laugh. Anyone still here was looking for something. And theirs is the only car left in the garage that's undamaged.

"They're coming towards us."

There's not all that much space in the Renault. Iker's in a strange, half-sitting position, wedged between David and the door. David's slumped against the other side, just below the eyeline of the figures.

He stretches his left leg out from under Iker's head and towards the front seat. Painfully slowly, like he's a statue learning to move for the first time. Shifts his weight over. One hand on the passenger seat. Still keeping his head low, edging towards the steering wheel. A bead of sweat drips down his forehead and he blinks it away. Fuck, he's too old for this.

Halfway to the front seat. His neck is stuck forward like an arrow, a runner dipping towards the finish line. "David," Iker whispers, and then " _David_ ," louder and more insistent - David looks up. Locks eyes with one of the shadows, which isn't a shadow after all.

They can't shoot. David looks down at the handgun in the man's hand and back towards Iker. They can't shoot - that'd ruin the whole reason they wanted the car in the first place. Can't risk damaging the car.

Could shatter the windscreen and still drive it. Could hit Iker in the backseat -

David hurls himself forward onto the wheel and jams one hand into the horn, loud enough to startle the first shots wide. His other hand goes to the keys and guns the engine; he kicks the accelerator pedal like he it's a ball in training and he's aiming for the corner of the net. The Renault whines forward. There's more shots - something shatters, someone's screaming - a moment of disassociation before David realises it's him, _shit shit shit_ , smashing the car into the men, the suspension rattling as they roll over bodies, two bumps and more yelling. Iker crouched behind the driver's seat swearing in Spanish, shards of glass. More gunfire and then they're out in the open, David turning down the road somewhere, anywhere, just to get away.

"David," Iker's yelling. "They aren't following us. Hey."

He feels Iker's hand on his shoulder and takes his foot off the pedal until they coast to a stop. His hands are still gripping the steering wheel, so tight his knuckles look like mountain ridges.

"Are you hurt?" he says numbly, the words bursting out of him in a rush. "You didn't get shot or anything, did you - "

"I'm fine." Iker clambers over the gearbox and into the passenger seat. David notices that there's a cut on his cheek, gouged from a shard of glass. "They shot through the window but missed me."

"Stupid idea." David reaches back to grab the first-aid kit from his pack. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have come."

"Stop that. Who would take care of you if I hadn't?"

David cleans the wound as best as he can, then tapes a strip of gauze over. The fabric immediately gets blotted out with pale red. Iker stays silent, trembling faintly under his touch.

The sun's only just rising. The car's stopped on a dirt track road, and David doesn't suppose that they'll be able to find their way to France from here. A ray of sunlight catches Iker's jaw and throws it into the most beautiful relief.

"We'll figure it out," Iker says, understanding always.

 

*

 

Getting back on the main road costs them another hour but eventually they're winding through the mountains towards France. The Pyrenees. Snow-tipped and stately, with the kind of quiet that even the end of the world couldn't touch.

Used to ski here, David says. You snob, Iker says.

David remembers the border crossing they come to. Eight lanes covered by a long metal sheet and blue Euro signs that said _Espana_ on one side and _France_ on the other. Filled with snobs heading off for holidays, some with skis tacked to the top of their car roofs. No one now, of course; the first thing that had gone were the borders, and the sheet had long since caved in on one end.

They drive through the side still passable in silence. David thinks that maybe he should say something, but Iker looks sternly ahead and it feels like an unwanted weight has come to rest upon their shoulders. Everything past the border looks the same as the road before.

 

*

 

The south of France is known as _le Midi_ , a term deriving from 'middle day' in Old French and comparable to _Mezzogiorno_ from southern Italy. Tourists from all over the world come here to enjoy the Rivera, the special cattle breeds, the wine regions. It is the most popular tourist region of France.

If there's anyone around, David doesn't see them; the farmhouses they pass are all hollowed out or quiet. The rest is field - patches of green marred by scabs of charred ground. Dead special cattle breeds lie on their backs with flies buzzing around them. Sticks where vines might have grown once, burnt to stumps.

"Jesus," he says aloud.

Iker glances at him. "What?"

"Keep your eyes on the road, Casillas," David mock-orders, then, "just wondering what the hell happened."

"Same hell that happened everywhere else."

Iker looks back at the road.

 

*

 

"Hey - turn in here."

"Why?"

"That's a chateau. Might be some good wine left."

"Probably everything has been stolen."

"Worth a look."

"Aren't you in a hurry?"

David shakes his head and closes his eyes. If this is the end, then they have all the time in the world.

Iker turns, humming a song David doesn't know.

 

*

 

It's a mid-sized chateau. The vineyards are desolate and all the windows have been shattered, but there's something impersonal about the destruction which tells David that no one's been through the estate yet. Iker parks and they wander past the heavy oak doors, splintered and hewn apart by shrapnel as if they were paper. There isn't a sound in the house.

We could live here, Iker says. We could, David says.

They find the door to the cellar and walk down the long cold flight of steps. David half expects to meet someone - it's an ideal place to live out constant bombing, after all - but when they reach the bottom it's only racks and racks of wine in the dark.

"Look," Iker says, nudging David. There's an oil lamp in the corner still full. "Really going for the rustic feel."

David fishes a lighter out of his pocket. The room gleams dimly, red-hued.

He's not a connoisseur by any means; he isn't even that fond of wine as he is of whiskey. But he steps forward anyhow, picks out three or four bottles of what look like good vintages. Iker watches him.

"Do you want any?" David asks, turning around.

Iker snorts. "Don't drink and drive."

"One glass isn't going to make a difference."

"Where's your sense of civic responsibility?"

But Iker sits anyway, and David uncorks a '97 Bordeaux Supérieur that he pours into two glasses. Isn't even sure if they're the right glasses, really. He knows they're different sorts for different types but he isn't clever enough to know it. Gary tried to teach him once but had failed miserably. Gary loved wine.

Ah, David thinks.

Iker's still watching him, one hand wrapped around the stem of the glass. David shakes his head and looks back evenly. Lifts his glass and clinks it against Iker's.

"Cheers."

"Cheers," Iker echoes.

For a while they don't do anything but sit there and drink and laugh, like they're in a restaurant somewhere in town, and there's the sound of diners and the kitchen and waiters tripping over their shoes all around. They talk about - David doesn't know what they talk about. Maybe football results, or David's latest modelling gig, or the new cafe down the road. Whatever they always used to talk about. Whatever anyone used to talk about.

It helps, in a way David can't explain.

It stops, also. The quiet murmur of the restaurant fades. The bottle empties. They're just two strangers trespassing in an old house no one lives in anymore.

"We should go," Iker says after a silence.

"Yeah," David says.

He arranges the bottle and glasses so that it looks like they're waiting for someone to sit down; the next couple to come in and have dinner and a pleasant evening. The sommelier waiting at the side with cloth on their arm, the romantic candlelight bathing the table.

Iker finds a box and they put the other bottles of wine in, carry it back to the car. "He'll like this," he says gravely, doesn't elaborate. Yes, David thinks, if.

He starts the car.

 

*

 

David was the one who'd taken Gary out for his first drink. They'd had a day off. Back then footballers still drunk on the Friday nights before the game, so he'd figured Coach wasn't going to bat an eye if they did it on a Wednesday, and besides it was almost Christmas.

Proper drink, mind, not the K-Cider nonsense Gary'd done with and passed out in front of the Chinese takeaway on. They'd found a good restaurant recommended to David by a friend of a friend, and Gary'd made a face when the wine had first come, but he'd gotten into the spirit by the end of the first glass.

And after that they'd taken a cab back to David's house and Gary had pressed him up against the wall, breath smelling of alcohol, warm against his neck.

Manchester feels very far away.

 

*

 

"I wish the radio was working." David gives it a nudge. "Would be nice to have some music."

Iker looks away from the window towards him, one hand scritching at the wound on his cheek. "I can sing for you if you'd like."

"I'd rather play for Chelsea than listen to you sing," David retorts. "Don't scratch, you'll make it worse."

"Yes, papa."

"Don't call me that."

"You _are_ an old man."

"I'm young at heart."

"Weren't you alive when they faked the moon landing?"

"Don't you fucking start that again."

There's a rumble in the distance. Iker has opened his mouth but swivels his head around instead, eyes wide. "Do you - "

"It's coming from behind."

They both know this sound. They've heard it for the last five months. It comes closer, closer, like an oncoming train, the edge of a thunderstorm.

"We have to get off the road," David mutters. He's already stepping on the pedal as hard as he can. Iker's trying to stuff the wine into the backpacks. It's not going too well.

"Doesn't matter," he yells over the noise. "There's nothing here for miles."

David has a quick look around - there's no cover in agriculture country, short of driving into one of the craters and hoping that lightning doesn't strike twice. Just the fields, the dead cows, the charring.

" _Drive!_ " Iker's screaming now. David glances in the rear-view mirror and can see the dust kicking up behind the car. Like the way the whole ground would come up in the disaster movies he sometimes flicked through. Dust balloons metres into the atmosphere, a tidal wave. The sound deafens.

" _I'm trying_!" he screams back. His foot is pressed so far into the accelerator he's almost surprised he can still feel it. The engine whines underneath his fingers, the car lurches forward, it isn't going fast enough -

Vibrations rock the ground below them. Seismic waves, mini-earthquakes - David can see the drone high above them - there's almost a moment of quiet, Iker with his mouth open, no sound coming out.

 

*

 

  1. _Air strike_



 

_*_

 

David opens his eyes.

He's lying on the ground, clumps of dirt scattered over him. He moves his arms, then his legs; everything seems to be in working order. Brings a hand to his face. Comes away dirty and bloodied.

He lifts his head. He's lying maybe ten, twenty feet from the car, which has been upended into a shell crater right in front of it. Black smoke streams out from under the hood. It's a wonder he's alive.

"Iker?"

He puts his hands behind him and props himself up. His ears are ringing non-stop. Iker's still strapped into the car. David can see his silhouette now prone against the airbag.

"Iker!"

He scrambles towards the car on his knees, fingernails digging into the churned-up soil. Iker looks over at him and grins vaguely. Other than dangling upside down he looks okay. "Wear your seatbelt next time," he says, "you idiot."

David cuts the tangled belt and Iker shakes himself loose, crawling out through the battered car window. "You're bleeding," he says, peering up at David's face. "Looks bad."

"Could be so much worse."

Both of them freeze.

The voice seems to carry, like it's coming from a way off. It sounds so awfully _different_ from Iker's voice that it takes David a second to register it as human. Takes him a second longer to remember that he hasn't heard another human voice since Gary.

"No, really," the voice continues, drawing closer. It's got a French accent. "You could be dead. You're not! Surprise! You could look happier!"

David sees him then - drawing close on what looks like a golf buggy. Or a jeep - something that's allowing him to cross over the mud quick. He's got a megaphone in one hand. He stops in front of the wreck, beaming.

"He's hurt," Iker says.

"Oh, don't be such a downer," the man snorts. "No hazardous particles in this part of France. He's not going to die."

The buggy comes to a halt in front of them. The man gets off and grins. He's got dark hair, a stocky build, strong features. A middle-aged surfer vibe surrounds him. There's a kindly, if slightly manic gleam in his eye.

"I'm David," David offers, when he doesn't say anything else. "This is Iker. We're trying to get to England."

"Of course I know who you are," the man snorts. "Used to see you on TV all the time. Never bought any underwear, it looked far too tight."

Iker cracks a grin.

"I'm Bixente Lizarazu," says the man. "Yes, it's a Basque name, and yes, I'm both French and Basque. If you were driving you probably came through my home town. It is a nasty place now. All kinds of terrible things in the air. Everyone had to leave."

David remembers the haze that had followed them from Bilbao, shudders.

"Can you help us?" Iker asks. Nods at the car. "We had some supplies, but I don't know how much can be saved."

"Let's find out, then, shall we?"

Bixente is so cheerful that David almost forgets where they are: narrowly surviving a bombed out car in the middle of France, the rest of the world either dead or dying.

"You could look happier," he whispers to Iker, and they both start to laugh.

 

*

 

France rests on caves. Tunnels, catacombs, shafts from the war, grottos - the ground below is filled with them, water and stone. When the trouble had first started, Bixente tells them, he'd been an environmental engineer in Poitiers. Lucky him. Within months he and his colleagues had fitted out a viable network below-ground, complete with access points, one of which they drive through now in the golf buggy.

"We've been scrounging ever since," Bixente says. The access point has a sheet of steel over it, welded together from a mish-mash of cars and pans and anything that could be hit into shape. Someone's fitted a hinge taken from some kind of door and the steel swings shut behind them. "Looking for supplies, or lucky travellers such as yourself, after bombing runs. Others not so lucky."

They drive a short ways down before they have to get out and walk. Someone's scrawled _Vault_ _13_ as a joke on the wall. The path is, startlingly, lit by electric lamps.

"Used to be a tourist cave," Bixente explains. "So they had some portable generators in case anything went wrong. I don't know how much longer the fuel will last."

In the main grotto a few families are huddled together. Bixente makes no introductions and David doesn't ask, though he sees the way they look at him and Iker. There's something of the old world left after all.

Bixente brings them to a corner where the medical supplies are, using some saline solution and gauze to patch up the cut on David's head. His hands are steady. Once that's done, they lay out whatever they managed to save. Iker's backpack is charred and some of David's kit is missing, but miraculously the bottles of wine are still intact. Bixente, of course, swiftly liberates one.

"For our collection," he winks. The bottle vanishes. "Now. Why are you trying to get to England?"

"We're looking for someone," Iker answers when David doesn't. "He answered his phone two weeks ago. We think he's still alive."

"Where?"

"Manchester."

"Of course." Bixente leans back, thoughtful. "Do you know what happened in England?"

"No."

"I wouldn't recommend going there."

"We're going to anyway."

David looks over at Iker, whose jaw is set and brow is furrowed. This Iker won't take no for an answer. He's twenty-four and doesn't look it, the saints plucking him into their midst too early. Something sticks in David's throat, and he shifts his hand to give Iker's a squeeze.

"That's fine," Bixente says, looking amused at this sudden, childish stubbornness. "I'm just warning you. All the major English cities were hit by nuclear bombs, so the dead zones will be hell. The Chunnel was badly damaged in a bomb blast. And they say some kind of toxin was released into the atmosphere over there, so who knows if your friend is still alive."

"We've got to try," David says at last, his voice sounding awfully small. "You know. At least we've got to try."

Bixente throws his head back and guffaws. "Of course, you crazy sons of bitches. I know lost causes when I see them. Luckily for you, we might be able to help."

"What do you mean?"

Bixente gets to his feet, the good humour gone out of his face, now gentle but stern. David is reminded of his father.

"First you get some sleep. It's been a long day. In the morning we'll talk."

Suddenly David becomes aware of how heavy his bones feel; he falls on top of the sleeping bag Bixente gives him, too tired to curl up inside of it. There's a beat where he misses the Renault. Stupid thing to do, since they hadn't been in there all that long, and David had barely driven it before. But it was comfort, his car, Iker's head on his lap.

It takes him a while to register that it isn't the Renault he misses. Just all of whatever that had been, car plates and license registration. _Vault 13_. They haven't played football for five months and nineteen days. It is almost summer break.

 

*

 

"Good morning."

Iker's sitting up cross-legged, looking at him cheerfully. He's washed up somewhere. The bandage on his cheek has been replaced with a fresh, wider strip of gauze, and he seems in better spirits than yesterday.

"What time is it?"

"Does it matter?" Iker laughs. "Maybe eleven. You sleep too much."

That's why Gary had stopped rooming with him. David props himself up and rubs his eyes. His head's throbbing something awful, but to be fair he'd almost died yesterday.

"You should go see Bixente about that," Iker says, gesturing towards his own face. "They have good stocks of everything."

"Yeah?"

"Yes." Iker tilts his head towards the far end of the cave, which is hidden in the shadows. "Even a car."

"You're joking."

"A Citroën AX, complete with battery, fuel, and a two-year-old map in the glove compartment." Bixente's voice comes loud from behind and David jumps. "Unfortunately the GPS is broken, but we hope you understand."

David doesn't know what to say to this. He turns around to look at Bixente - really look at him - there is something soft and sad in his eyes. In the way that his smile is gentle and his breath has slowed.

"I know who you are looking for," he says. "Or rather I know what you are looking for."

If he doesn't glance pointedly at David when he says that then it must be a trick of the light.

"A friend," David says. Bixente shakes his head.

"A phone call. A voice. Nothing more than that." He leans closer. "We are all looking for nothing more than that. Do you know what I mean?"

David's throat is dry. He says, "yeah."

 

*

 

Only when Bixente's satisfied that they have enough food does he agree to let them go. "Good luck," he says cheerfully, brushing off the protestations and thanks with a nonchalant hand. "You will need it."

They drive through another access point, this time in the direction of Calais. The steel sheet closes behind them - Bixente doesn't call out _goodbye,_ and neither of them turn back.

The sun is high over Northern France as Iker drives. The landscape's changed again; instead of gentle rolling fields there're more trees, crops, all of them burnt out. Once or twice David catches a flash of sunken ground. Paths that lead nowhere. Cycles.

There still aren't any people. They can't all be living in grottos and caves, David presumes, but they aren't living in the wreckage either. They just aren't there. The silence settles around his ears and he hates it - would shove it away if he could - but it persists, like a cloud.

The sun's on its way down when they drive past a battered sign that reads _Rouen_. Iker stops the car while David checks the map.

"Damn, still two hours away. And I suppose we'll want to cross the Channel in daylight."

"You sleep too much, old man." Iker gives him a wry grin.

"Wake me up, then."

They shift to get comfortable; Iker stretched out across the backseat again, David jams a shirt against the window of the passenger seat and leans against it. All's dark and quiet through the glass.

Bixente had left them some bread and butter and David breaks pieces off now, passing them to Iker. It's good bread. Of course it is, they're in bloody France. David snorts.

"What's so funny?"

"We're in France, eating baguettes."

Iker laughs too.

"Maybe in Calais we will find eclairs."

"I could do with a nice eclair."

"Yes."

They finish the bread and then have some apples. David thinks of steak and pasties with chicken and mushrooms in them.

"When we get there," he finds himself saying, "you should try pasties. They have all sorts nowadays."

"What are pasties?"

"It's - " David bites his lip. "Pastry, but then you fold it and stuff things into it."

"Mhm."

"I can't explain it very well. It's just something I've always eaten."

"I would like that." Iker's smile is both warm and far away. He isn't quite looking at David. "I would like that very much."

 

*

 

The first time they'd met Iker had barely registered. Or he'd registered only in the way all of them had - rich and posh in the way people from Spain might be to a boy from Leytonstone. He shook hands and they'd all already known his name.

He tried his best to get to know them, each in their own way; their pets, their lunch habits, their haunts. All of them. Iker was not special. Iker had the same likes and dislikes as anyone, ate the same things, watched the same movies.

Nothing special.

Some things, he supposes, you can't explain. Like friendships and how you fall into them. Like heroes. Iker was warm and his smile was nice and there was an almost acerbically funny side to him that David hadn't known existed. And he would have come, David knew, whether they'd been fucking or not, whether they were in love or not. He could have hated David and he still would have come.

Maybe that was all. Or maybe he had found something he hadn't been looking for, or hadn't expected to find again. In Iker's heart on his sleeve. In the way he looked across the field, one glove on the posts of his goal.

 

*

 

He can't remember what he dreams of, only that when he wakes up Iker's shaking him by the shoulder. He pushes himself off the window; the kit under his arm is rumpled and he takes his time folding it back into a shape. The edges are charred.

We're almost there, Iker says. Uh-huh, David says. Don't worry, Iker says.

It isn't what he's worried about but he nods anyway, his words closing around themselves.

 

*

 

The sea here is black. Ash-black, charred into darkness. It fades quietly into a muddy blue further out, David thinks squinting, but equally it could just be a trick of the mind. _I know the sea is blue therefore it looks blue to me._

He turns the wheel gently. It is an excellent car, smooth as silk.

_I know that the Chunnel exists therefore it will be there for me._

Iker's looking out the window. "Can you see anything?" David asks, tilting his head without turning it. He knows that on a good day you might be able to catch Dover or the like.

"A bit," Iker says, halting. "A lot of fog in the way. But I can make out - yes. Dark shapes. It reminds me of a mountain ridge, you know."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. It must be England. There isn't anything else for miles."

To his credit David doesn't stop driving. Doesn't look over. Doesn't give into the sudden suffocation in his throat, the rush of blood to his head.

He thinks of white cliffs and seagulls. An old wartime song; they're in a war, aren't they. A constant raging war. We'll meet again, don't know where don't know when. He thinks of beach and sand, umbrellas with concentric circles, ice cream.

It really is an excellent car.

He thinks: I know England exists.

 

*

 

There're more signs of life the closer they get to Calais, or at least of having lived: trampled grass, car tyres, litter all over the ground. Everything seems to be pointing away from the port, not towards. The wrong way. So whatever had happened had happened in England first.

They draw closer to the tunnels, two vast round holes set into a wall of rock. The faded tricolour mural on one end is barely visible; shrapnel has scratched off most of the lettering. Train tracks twisted and stolen from the ground. One of the special trains lying on its side with the doors open, like a fish that's been gutted.  

David remembers watching the opening of the Channel Tunnel on the news. It'd been near the end of the season in '94; they'd already won the league and he hadn't played a single game.

Memory's a strange thing. David doesn't remember where he was, what he was doing. Who they'd played just before or after. What time of day it'd been. Only the bright red blue on the white, the words _EURO TUNNEL_ written proudly across the flag, the telly turning the colours lurid.

"How many trains did they have?" Iker asks, peering into the dark of one of the tunnels. "I hope there isn't another one stuck inside."

"A few, probably."

They look back at the one lying on its edge.

"It's like Russian roulette," David says.

"Who Wants to be a Millionaire," Iker says.

They have a quiet lunch of bread, tuna, and a can of peaches. All the while the tunnels hover in front of them. David looks up once; this close you can see the thin spiderweb cracks shooting through the facade. What was it that Bixente had said about the tunnel? 

  1. _England is cut off._
  2. _The Chunnel has collapsed._



"I'm not an engineer," he starts, at which point Iker bursts into a snort of laughter.

"No kidding."

David pulls a face. "I'm not an engineer, but those cracks don't look particularly safe."

Iker twists around and doesn't say anything for a long time. So long that David doesn't know if he ought to say something else, a quip or a comment about the weather or something that'll break the silence. When Iker finally turns back his face is a mask of inscrutable.

"No," he says, going back to his bread. "I don't think that's very safe."

David feels something seize up in his stomach, a hitch of breath that gets lodged halfway. They're right here. Right here and with nowhere else to go.

"D'you - " he clears his throat, suddenly finding it hard to swallow. "It's fine if. Y'know."

"If what?"

He feels, absurdly, like a teenager nervously asking for a date to prom. "I didn't ask you to come with me."

Iker hums. "That's true."

"And I can't ask you to go on with me."

"That's true too."

"Through something that isn't safe."

"It might collapse at any moment.

"And who knows what we'll find on the other side."

"David," Iker says, "you are incredibly handsome and also incredibly dense."

"What?"

"How many times do I have to say this? You didn't ask me to come with you. I wanted to come with you. I packed your bag, didn't I?"

He leans over and gives David a kiss on the cheek. David feels the place where his lips touched burn, a searing flash of heat.

"Okay," he says.

"Okay." Iker tilts his head and glances at him. "Besides, there's only one car and I'm not walking back to Madrid."

They laugh and David catches Iker's eye, and then they stop laughing. That same thing in David's stomach seems to uncurl. Gently, quietly. The sun seeps through the window of the backseat, catching a sliver of Iker's face as he leans forward again to kiss David.

And he doesn't know why, but David presses all of himself into kissing Iker back. Pulls him in with a hand around his neck, lets Iker shove him against the door as he deepens the kiss. Iker's tongue wet against his own. There's barely any space in the car. They break apart only for Iker to kiss his way down David's jaw, still using his hands to hold David's shoulders.

"Iker," David says, and it comes out low and harsh and half-bitten off, "you know we - "

"I know," Iker murmurs, sliding his hands up David's cheap t-shirt. Fuck, but there's something about those bloody keeper's hands. Feverish against his skin. "Don't worry, _querido_. There are other things."

There's something about the way Iker always slips back into Spanish too, and as he tilts up for another kiss David feels whatever strength he had in his legs to to jelly. He helps Iker pull his t-shirt off then yanks at Iker's until their skin is flush against each other, Iker pinning his hands against the window as he lifts a leg to straddle him.

"David," Iker says, his voice oddly steady, grave. As if they're coming to the end of an agreement. He grinds his hips into David's and the friction of David's jeans against his cock is almost too much. He bucks forward but Iker's hands are firm and he thinks, once again, of the goal, Iker's gloves sliding off the post.

"God _damn_ it, Iker, hurry up."

"Becks." He's never called him Becks before. Ever. Even _David_ had been a stretch at first, Iker content to use his surname until David had managed to convince him otherwise. " _Mierda_ , Becks, _calma_."

The word stalls in David's head and he's numb as Iker reaches down to unbutton his jeans, pull down his briefs. Iker's fingers brush against his cock and he hisses, snapped out of it by the jolt of contact.

They rut against each other, Iker's hand taking them both, almost desperate as he jerks. David digs his fingers into Iker's ass, feeling Iker's body shake underneath. Desperate. Yes. They've fucked too many times to count but it's never been like this, David's nickname falling alien from Iker's lips, his whole being trembling like he's only just holding himself together.

Maybe. Maybe.

At that point Iker purposefully drags his thumb over the head of his cock and David comes, messy and breathless, Iker lasting only a second or two more.

He slides off David and rests his head in the crook of his arm, saying nothing. It's a squeeze wedged on the thin edge of the backseat but they lie like that for a while, limbs tangled up, the still air of the car settling around them reminiscent of dust motes on a window ledge.

 

*

 

They share a bottle of water between them to wash, David feeling stupid as he stands outside the car stark naked rubbing himself down. "Careful, Beckham," Iker shouts, dancing gleefully on the concrete like a madman, "the paparazzi might be watching."

"You're giving them a good show," David retorts, flicking water at Iker, who yelps and laughs and ducks away. Whatever David had noticed in the car seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a careless abandon you sometimes got at the end of the world.

It reminds him of San Sebastian, on the beach. It reminds him of winning the league and spraying each other with champagne. Only it's just water and only it's just two of them, neither the paparazzi nor any other soul in sight of a tunnel fifteen million people once used.

He walks to the car, parked in the shadow of the fallen train. Their clothes are bundled together in the back and the brightness of the red is immediately obvious. He tugs it out gently, careful not to catch the metal zip in any of the fabric.

He'd worn a lot of the nineties' stuff at Iker's as pyjamas because they were big and comfortable and went down to his thighs, so he'd never felt the need to put pants on. Iker hated them. He'd fuss about the colour or the cut or anything he could think of, _don't walk around my house with your balls out._

 _Even if they're golden?_ David would ask, grinning.

Iker would mutter something rude and it'd usually end with his shirt off anyway. But here it is, packed in for him.

He pulls it on. In those days the number was felt, not sticker, and he can feel the weight on his back. Beckham. Seven. Bombing down the right wing, and Gary Neville's arriving with the overlap -

Iker trots round the back of the car, skinny and pale against the gravel of the road, hair damp. If his smile wavers when he notices what David's wearing then it's gone before David can catch it.

"Don't sit in Bixente's car with your balls out," is what he says instead.

"Even if they're golden?" David grins. His chest hurts.

"It's a nice jersey."

His chest hurts. The sunlight is dying. It hurts even to breathe.

 

*

 

"What's that over there?"

Iker's pointing at a road that leads up the hill next to the tunnels. There's what looks to be some kind of opening at the end of the road, smallish-looking and completely dark. David squints at it.

"Dunno."

"Should we have a look?"

"All right."

Iker cranks the car into gear and it trundles up the road, which is in and of itself bad shape; pockmarks from shrapnel everywhere, jagged cracks that Iker swerves to avoid. When they finally get to the mouth of what seems to be a tunnel David peers up at the sign over it.

"Says service."

"Oh, I remember that."

"You do?"

"I saw it on the news. A tunnel between the two train ones that has a road."  

"Since when do you watch the news, Mr. Fake Moon Landing?"

"Shut up." Iker rolls his eyes. "It would be faster than driving on rails, and it definitely wouldn't be blocked by a train."

"It looks in worse nick."

That's true - the shittiness of the road aside, the walls of the tunnel look scarred and gaping in places, the whole thing ready to collapse at the slightest touch.

"Maybe it's more stable the further on you go," Iker says dubiously.

"The further on you go is the sea," David points out.

It'd be infinitely faster than the rails, though. And maybe the rail tunnels were equally fucked. There were a lot of maybes in an equation that David didn't know how to solve.

"You pick," Iker says. "It is your funeral."

He grins, looking more proud of himself than someone who'd only learnt gallows humour upon threat of death should have been.

"Okay," David says. "It's our bloody funeral."

 

*

 

The lights have gone out, if there ever were lights in the first place; it looks, David thinks, like a tunnel made to go nowhere for a very long time. Only the headlights illuminate the never-ending dashes on the road, scratched off in places.

Iker drives as fast as he dares. Here and there the ceiling looks patchy at best, and they ought to be underwater by now, so that can't be good.

"Look."

There's a box edged in yellow jutting out on Iker's side, edges chipped. A similarly-coloured line cuts the road in two from where the box sits, and David doesn't even have to read the faded text to know where they are.

_Point Median_

"Underneath," Iker says, slowing down to gesture with his hand. David peers out through his window. There are two little triangles marked out just below the box. No words. Flecked-off paint, but David can make them out well enough; the tricolour in the triangle pointing behind them, and the union jack in the one pointing forward.

They cross the line. Mid point. David turns back over the seat to stare at the triangle, long after it disappears into the darkness.

 

*

 

"Did you say something?"

"No."

"Huh."

"No, you're right. I can hear something."

A low kind of rumble. Muffled and distant. Like there's an air strike going on, only it isn't happening to them.

"The Chunnel's too deep to be bombed," David says uncertainly.

The rumble grows louder. David makes a sudden grab at Iker, who yelps more in surprise than pain.

"What?"

"Drive!"

" _What -_ "

There's a drop of water on the windscreen that wasn't there before.

Iker swears and steps on the gas. The Citroën bucks forward, whining, the red pointer of the odometer jumping past the limit. Something clunks into the roof of the car and David screams _Jesus_ and they jerk strangely, suddenly, wrenching away from the sudden hole in the road.

Without thinking David's brain sinks into maths - if we hit the middle fifteen minutes ago then we should almost be out - but no sky appears ahead of them, only headlights fast dropping off into water.

Water. The English Channel. Pooling around them, lifting the car forward; it's almost surreal, the first time all four wheels leave the ground. Like they're floating away into space. The cord is cut. There's no way back to the ship.

Iker slams at the pedals uselessly. Smashes his hand into the wheel yelling something that doesn't matter, a voice a sound. David closes his eyes. They're rising, rising. Water in his shoes. To his knees. It's a half-half bet if they get smashed into the ceiling first or drowned. It's your bloody funeral -

What was that you were saying about a plane, David says. Shut the fuck up, Becks, Iker says.

To the hem of his shirt. He thinks: I know England exists. Up the felt number, bottom of the crest. He takes a long, deep breath. His hand in the water finds Iker's, holds it tight. Chin, forehead, all of him. Still rising. Iker gives his hand a squeeze.

Someone told him once it's worse the more you move, so he sinks back into his seat, his arms buffed upwards by the current. He holds his breath until his lungs start to burn; a few more seconds, a few after that. I know. Hold on. I know.

Iker expels his breath in a shower of bubbles. They float past David, glinting in the sunlight.

Sunlight. Sun.

With a great, heaving gurgle, the tunnel vanishes, coughing the Citroën up onto dry land. Instinctively David propels himself towards Iker's end and slams him against the door, sending them both tumbling out and splayed across the muddy ground. David props himself onto his knees and inhales so deeply there's a sharp shock in his chest.

He rolls onto his back and lies with his hands on his abdomen, staring up. The sky isn't anything like he remembers - dark, stifling with smoke, his face already feeling gritty from the ash and chemicals. There's something sickly about the whole thing.

Where are they? Folkestone. Kent. Ground underneath him churned up like the pictures of trenches they would talk about for history class. David squeezes his eyes shut and tries to remember what this used to look like. Green, blue, grass, tree.

 

*

 

The car is smashed. That's the most obvious thing; there's water everywhere, the roof falling in must have clunked something out of commission, the engine doesn't start.

They pull their things out of the boot, discarding the food that's too wet to eat. The shattered bottles of wine. David toes at the glass, thinking about cider. Hoiks his bag onto his shoulders and stares out properly over the countryside. Grinding, twisted steel. Barricades that look quickly built and just as quickly wrecked.

"Did you use to come here?" Iker asks. His voice is quiet.

"Sometimes."

No maps or road signs anywhere. Nobody, either. Maybe there weren't that many people in Kent to begin with.

"Do you think town will have a car or something we can borrow?"

"Maybe. Folkestone's pretty posh, innit?"

"You tell me."

They turn away from the tracks and meander down what seems to have been a sort of major road, wide and still tarred in places. Folkestone is too far south to have been hit by the same firestorm which consumed London, but something seems to have happened here as well.

Twenty minutes in of just walking, their sodden shoes caked with whatever dust and debris lying scattered on the ground. Not seen a single car yet that isn't a burnt-out wreck or in chunks. Iker toes something in the dirt and hunches down.

"That's what happened here."

David kneels next to him. Glimmering half-buried is a shiny piece of metal with the letters _USA_ stamped on them, in a font he vaguely recognises from _Apollo 13._

"Christ."

They walk on.

More buildings come into view. Most ragged, sheared away - he remembers watching a documentary where they'd shown post-Blitz houses cut perfectly in two, one half perched atop the other. There's a square block with a Premier Inn logo half-smashed. It sticks a lump in his throat.

Railroad tracks, similarly twisted. A Southeastern carriage on its side looted; someone's even taken the fabric of the seats so often complained about. Now we know why they say that about Southern Rail, David jokes. Iker's polite laugh is derived from context more than anything else.

It's going to be dark, soon. Not that it matters. The air is so stifling and grey that you must barely be able to tell the difference. David hacks a cough every now and then but Iker seems to be getting the worst of it, ashen-faced and breathing hard.

"Should we stop?"

"I'm fine."

It comes out oddly harsh and Iker pauses, regroups.

"It's fine."

He nods past the crumbling rows of suburban houses they've been walking by at something in the distance and pulls his lips into a thin smile. "Besides - that will cheer you up."

A column cleaves into the sky, half of the speaker-light combination used in non-league stadiums all over dangling precariously from its position. David wanders through the empty car park in a daze. It seems to be a whole complex - cricket, rugby, all windswept.

Here is the stadium. Here are the goalposts. In pieces on the ground, which is dark with ash. You can't see the white paint lines that mark out the middle circle or six yard box. Here are the terraces, covered with paper and burnt-up programmes, two of the roofs caved in.

It's a small ground. Not more than five thousand. In front of it stands a signboard with a metal cage at the bottom meant for changing the opponents' names. _FOLKESTONE INVICTA FOOTBALL CLUB_ , it reads. _NEXT HOME GAME VS._ The date is nearly six months ago.

He leans against the railing of the terrace without a roof, the yellow-orange paint cracked and peeling. Iker comes to stand beside him. Maybe it's Saturday, 3pm, and all over England non-league clubs are listening to a referee's whistle, fans in their hundreds milling about where they're stood now, ready to shout _WANKER_ in their regional accent.

"It's the little things, like."

"What?"

"At Preston. I could always hear them yelling things at me 'cos they were so close."

Iker - Gary, for that matter - has never played for a smaller club. He remembers Deepdale. Scoring from a corner kick. It's his own, no one else's.

"We should go," Iker says, lightly. "Find a car before dark."

"Yes. Yeah."

They walk on. He laughs at that now; the old world is so far away yet keeps coming back to the same things. Walk on, walk on.

 

*

 

  1. _We might get mugged by a bunch of gangsters._



 

*

 

Suddenly there's an arm around David's neck. He snaps his head instinctively but the arm closes around his windpipe, choking him. He claws at the grip in vain. "A'right, lads," a voice whispers close to his ear, strangely muffled, "wha've we got here?"

"Tha's David bloody Beckham, that is," says another voice through the fog. A man materialises in front of him. He's got a gas mask on, bulging-eyed like the ones from the war, and there's some kind of pistol in his hands that's aimed at David. "What's he doing here?"

"Why don't you ask him, then, you daft bastard," says the first man. He's fished out a knife and the steel digs into David's neck.

_Where's Iker?_

"What're you doing here?" the second man asks him. London accents, both of them. It's a long way to London yet.

David gasps, trying to draw breath. Iker's still nowhere to be seen. _Get out_ , David thinks. _Get away._

"Oi, Frank, you're choking him too tight."

"If I let go of him he might wiggle out."

"And if you don't he can't answer my question, now, can he."

"Was a rhetorical fucking question, John."

"How was I s'posed to know that?"

"You would if you weren't such a thick - "

The man howls with sudden anguish as a spade comes crunching down on his hand out of nowhere, taking the knife with it and David out of his grasp. David drops to the ground and grabs at the knife. John's swearing and squeezing at the trigger of his gun. It goes off like a pop - one, two - but then David's lunged towards him, knife in hand, swinging at the mask. The fabric is old and rips easily, and John screams as one of the lenses shatters into his eye.

"Fuck, _fuck -_ Frank - "

But Frank's on the ground as well, yelling as the spade comes down onto him hard and heavy. Iker's standing above him and there's something terrible in his face that David's never seen before.

John seizes the distraction to land a punch and David falls back, lip split. The knife falls from his grip. John scrambles to his feet and delivers a kick to David's ribs. David curls up, pain shooting through his side. Against the fog John with his broken, bleeding mug looks like some kind of a monster, leering at him, pistol angled towards his head.

"David sodding Beckham. How's your underwear now?"

"Just fine, thanks," David mutters, swings his leg up into John's balls. John doubles over, gasping, and David kicks out again, hooking his foot around John's leg and sending him crashing to the ground. He's over him in a flash, using his body weight to hold him down. Sticks an arm across John's windpipe and rams it down hard. His other hand smashes into John's face again and again, until his knuckles are cut up from the glass.

"David. _David._ "

David sits up. His ears are ringing. Everything feels out of focus, two pairs of spectacles in different degrees. His heart hammers in his chest.

"You're fine. Come on."

Strong hands take him by the shoulders and guide him up. Hands. Iker. Slowly his vision slides back to something normal. Iker's standing next to him, pulling him away from the two bodies along the road. He can't seem to look away. The spade is stuck in the mud next to Frank's head.

"David. Come on. We have to get into the car."

They'd left a Vauxhall running by the side of the road and Iker bundles David into the back, their things, then slams the door shut behind him. As David inhales sharp needles start jabbing into his lungs, replenishing fresh air he hadn't known he'd lost.

"They were wearing gas masks," Iker says grimly, digging out the first-aid kit that Bixente had given them. "Remember what Bixente said?"

David turns his head. Someone's taped up all of the air-con vents, proofed the edges of the doors, and there's an oxygen tank stowed in front of the passenger seat. He remembers Gary's voice, too - _what gas thing?_

"Toxin."

"Yes. Don't move."

For the first time David's aware of a burning sensation just under his ribs. He looks down. There's a small puckered hole in his shirt under the felt SHARP letters.

"Don't move," Iker says again, pushing his shirt up and swabbing at the wound with antiseptic. David hisses but tries his best not to buck up. "You're lucky it's superficial."

"Thank you, Doctor Casillas."

"Shut up." Iker looks up to meet David's gaze and his face softens. "Really."

David lies back and lets Iker work in silence, wincing as he tapes the gauze on tight. As the pain fades into something more manageable he focuses on Iker instead, face knitted with concentration, willing the things in the kit to work. It's so different from how it looked minutes ago. The blankness.

There wasn't anyone else he could have gone to, he thinks, when the bombs had first started falling. No one else would have brought him this far.

Iker reaches forward and gives David's shoulder a squeeze. His fingers have blood all over them.

"That should hold it."

"Iker?"

"Yeah?"

"You are enough, y'know," David mumbles, trying and failing to find the right words. "You're enough."

Iker smiles at him, face creasing.

"I know."

 

*

 

The keys are in the ignition and Iker climbs over to the front. He's got John's pistol in his hand, which he drops onto the passenger seat. Hits the glove compartment button while he's there. Inside is a pair of sunglasses, a battered map of no use, some Tesco receipts, and a pair of tickets to _National Treasure_.

Turns the key. The clock flickers to life: 5 pm.

"We can stay here tonight," he says, turning the wheel back towards the Folkestone Invicta car park. "A few more hours won't matter."

David doesn't ask what he means by that. Doesn't say anything. Every fibre of his body seems to hurt. The wound. His knuckles, still bleeding through the cloth strips. He flickers in and out of consciousness on the back seat.

He hears sounds, sees Iker moving, sometimes. Leaning forward coughing. He looks more pale and tired when he thinks no one's watching him.

 

*

 

It's easy to get from London to Manchester. David's done this more times than he can count. You take the M1 and then the M6 and that's all. If you're in Kent then you have to find the M20 first, but after you're past London it's basically the same.

Five, six hours, tops. Jolly old motorways.

David wakes up with a massive headache, his ribs burning, but at least he isn't dead. Iker's sat ramrod straight in front, the pistol in his hands. He turns and gives David a wan smile.

"How are you feeling?"

"Could be better. You should sleep."

"I'm all right."

It's still dark out; can't be past six in the morning, although given the state of the sky David really can't tell.

They have sardines and tomatoes. There's not going to be enough food for tomorrow. David wonders briefly where Frank and John got their nosh, although given their habit of mugging people perhaps it was better not to know.

"Here, I'll drive."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." David's tone comes off sharper than he'd intended, and he catches himself. "Iker. You need to rest. Swear 'm not gonna pass out or anything."

Iker gives him a long glance. "Okay. But you wake me up if there's anything."

"Okay."

They swap positions. The delicate bending required makes David's wound burn, but he's careful to keep it off of his face. Iker settles into the seats and closes his eyes.

Have to get on the M20. Must be close to the main road they'd first walked past. David pulls out of the car park and back down the road, turning where the houses begin to thin out and only long, never-ending tracts of tar stretch out across the horizon. Lines with no end. Only the sky grey.

 

*

 

England.

A country that is not a country. That depends entirely on who you ask. Steel mills and empty coal mines of the North; rich clean suburbs and offices of the South. Pastoral green fields and grazing sheep. Football hooligans who drank too much beer. The Industrial Revolution and cloth factories, the might of the Royal Navy, the land of Shakespeare and EastEnders. Grease and pasties. Some corner of a foreign field.

A country that doesn't exist anywhere except in the imagination. No one does nostalgia like the English, which makes them, really, the best people to suffer an apocalypse.

Only the memory of England makes the landscape at all familiar to David; he sees things where Iker would only see desolation. They pass Maidstone to their left, a nearly-incinerated sign signalling for them to turn in if they'd like. Here was a Morrison's. Here was a red London bus. Here was the M20, M1, M6.

London passes by quickly enough, a hulking, smoldering ruin, the City skyline gone, hollowed out by the nuclear bombs. Here is Norman Road, Leytonstone, 1975. When they were children they would take the tube to Piccadilly Circus and look at the adverts. The fires have long run out of things to burn but still the air that hangs here is smoky, choked.

David looks away. Grips the wheel and drives, sucking back the sob that edges his throat.

Iker mutters something in his sleep.

The car trundles on, past what looks like Luton. Used to be an airport at any rate. David can see one or two planes in the distance, noses buried in the ground. Cars scattered nearby all trying to make a run for it. Maybe they got out okay; maybe they're in America now, or somewhere else safe. Maybe all that's left of England now is the Franks and Johns, lads who only knew how to kill to eat.

And Gary. Home. Manchester. Gary.

  1. _Gary isn't dead, but he's not alive either._



More than once David's forced off the road by a scything blast that's wrecked the motorway, leaving nothing but crumbs and rubble behind. He makes a note of how he turns before working his way back slowly in the right direction, losing his concept of place as he goes. He's unfolded the old glove compartment map and stuck it across the dashboard but that doesn't help. Somewhere in the midlands, maybe.

He can deal with forks in the road. Can deal with the bumps that jolt his ever-aching side, chunks of metal or bodies he doesn't want to know. Can deal with the chipped blue of motorway signs that read _The NRTH_ and a down arrow. Can deal with the green fields he remembers all burnt and weedy, the same dead cows they saw in France except bleaker somehow, as if being English made everything necessarily more dull.

He can deal with all of this. He thinks: I know England exists. He can deal with all of this.

It's getting marginally brighter through the smog, pinpricks of light creeping into the atmosphere. Iker wakes as they're crawling through a town with no name.

"Are you all right?" is the first thing he asks, so typical a question that David almost laughs.

"Yeah. You?"

"All right."

Iker props himself up against the window and stares out. David watches him through the rear-view mirror. His breathing is still laboured and his gaze is unseeing.

"No, you aren't."

Iker turns his head and meets his gaze in the mirror.

"No, I'm not."

"What's wrong?"

"Stop driving for a second."

David coasts the car to a halt at the side of the road. Leans over the seat and looks at Iker properly, brows furrowed. "What's wrong?"

"Look at me," Iker says, his words coming out still and glacial. "Just look at me."

David keeps his gaze even. Keeps his mouth shut. Iker leans forward, presses a hand to his cheek. Pushes their foreheads together. Every action is gentle, like David's made of glass and Iker's afraid of breaking him.

He's twenty-four and doesn't look it. There's something about him that remains fresh-faced even under the grime and days-stubble, his solemn brow, his thin, pink lips.

"I'll tell you when we get there, old man," he says as he pulls back, his grin not quite as shit-eating as it ought to be.

 

*

 

The engine rattles.

They've been cruising for a couple more hours without detour, the Midlands less damaged by virtue of not being noteworthy, and they're somewhere along a town when the engine rattles and coughs and shudders to a halt.

David slams at the wheel. The petrol meter ticks up before clicking back down to empty.

"Fuck me," he mutters. Iker looks up, owlish.

"What?"

"Out of petrol."

"Let me see."

David leans over to let Iker have a look, although he doesn't know what good that would do. Dead as a fucking doornail. All this way, and.

He presses his forehead against the window. The scenery has been mostly the same - destroyed buildings, razed fields - that he's fast grown sick of it, too tired to look. There you go. More imprints of buildings, more thick smog. A crumbling brown church with a spire and graveyard. Here were the religions whose gods are dead.

A crumbling brown -

"Fuck me," David says again, his voice coming out croaked and thin. "It's Altrincham."

"What?"

"Altrincham." Yes. He can see it now - this is St George's Church, the first thing you saw when you entered the city. The market house to their left, the golf course behind. The tram station with its white girders and plexiglass blackened and lying on the pavement. They'd taken the tram the first day it opened in '92, from Old Trafford straight down the same line where it ended. There was fuck all to do in Altrincham. Just a bloody big church.

He can walk to Old Trafford from here. Six, seven stops? - like a morning's hike, a training session.

He can't walk. There's poison outside. He was shot not a day ago. They're stuck in a car that can't move with an oxygen tank that'll soon run on empty.




Just went to show that worriers don't see everything that's coming. There wasn't an entry for suffocating in a hooligans' car miles from Manchester.

Iker's peering at him.

"Is that close?"

David swallows and the taste burns bitter down his throat.

"Yeah, it's close."

"Okay. Open the glove compartment."

David's frowns, but he does as he's told. Inside are the same things he'd already seen - sunglasses, map, receipts, tickets - and a gas mask that hadn't been there before.

"I found it in the boot," Iker says. "Yesterday while you were sleeping."

The rummage and movement. David picks it up, twists it in his fingers. It's of the same variety that Frank and John were wearing, though in considerably better shape.

"There's only one."

"Yes."

"Can we share it?"

Iker laughs. Coughs again. This time David sees the blood.

"The day you overslept, I talked to Bixente." He reaches up to peel off the gauze that's been on his face since San Sebastián. David recoils involuntarily, dropping the mask on the floor; the skin around the inconspicuous cut has bubbled and turned black. Under the dead flesh he can see bone.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Iker."

"It doesn't hurt, or anything. Now." Iker sticks the bandage back on carefully. "Bixente said that the South of France was like that. Airborne viruses. That's why they had to move."

No hazardous particles in this part of France.

"They heard it was worse in England, the poison. Didn't know if it was a virus or anthrax or mustard - " Iker shakes his head and chuckles. "Well. It isn't mustard or we would both be dead by now. I should go back and tell him."

David reaches out and grabs Iker's hand. Their arms extend between the seats, odd in formality, Iker's skin cold and clammy.

"You aren't going to die," David says.

"I am going to die."

"I don't want you to die."

He sounds childish and petulant, like a little boy being told he can't have ice cream. Iker squeezes his hand.

"You should go," he says. "Who knows how much time you have left."

He pulls his fingers gently away from David's grip. David bends down, slowly, picks the mask off the floor.

"I can't leave you here."

"You are going to leave me here."

"I can't."

Iker exhales. Leans against the back seat.

"Do you remember Madrid?"

David blinks. "Yes, of course."

"I don't." Iker takes a stab at a smile. "Or at least I don't remember it the way I wanted to. Chamartin station, and that long stretch without tall buildings. It always felt like a beach without the sand."

They'd sometimes hang around the tracks, after games. Little eateries and workshops scattered under the highways. The four columns of the Bernabeu never far behind.

"I remember the first time I walked out as a first-team player. My dream, Becks!" Iker laughs. "I've played for Real Madrid. I've played two hundred times for Real Madrid."

Oh, David thinks. He feels silly.

"Put on the mask, David."

 _Dah-veed._ He puts on the mask. Behind the sheet of glass Iker's face looks different somehow.

"You need to go now."

"I can't leave you here," he says again, voice cracking.

"Don't make me push you out of the car, old man. I'm already dying. You want me to have to fight?"

David gets out and closes the door behind him. There's a ringing in his ears. The smog presses down on him immediately, heavily, a blanket all around. He looks back. Iker's staring straight ahead, brow creased, lips pursed. Cheeks sunken. The stupid sideburns that are too long for him.

Cut your bloody hair, David said. You're one to talk, Iker said.

Iker looks at Altrincham like it's his field, his hand on the armrest like it's his goal. David bends down and raps his bloodied knuckles against the window. Stumbles backwards and turns and starts running.

 

*

 

He follows the tram tracks, or what's left of them. There were only two lines and both of them went through Old Trafford. He knows this. He knows Manchester exists. This is where he grew up, thirteen and decked out in the memorabilia his grandfather had bought, caps and scarves.

Past Broadheath straight on up. He runs like a footballer at the end of his career. The way they turned out sometimes for charity games huffing and wheezing, their knees buckling under them no matter how much they begged them to move. After you retired a part of you died. It was different, and you didn't miss it, but it died anyway.

The hole in his side feels like it's on fire. He tries his best not to think about it, grits his teeth. Every string in his body is pulled so tight he can feel it. Can play it like a fiddle. He runs until his legs start to hurt, and then he walks instead, as fast as he can, dragging his feet forward.

Around him are houses with no doors, buildings with no roofs. Still no one in sight. There are bodies, though, now that he's close enough to see them. Bones and blood drained, twisted as they died on the street. He walks past what seemed to be a hospital and looks at the darkened windows. Pieces of ambulance littered on the kerb.

"Hello?"

If there's still a doctor he can save Iker. Can save himself, can save Gary - or even just an oxygen tank, anything -

He tiptoes past the shattered metal on the floor, peers through the broken glass doors. It's all dark inside. There's a reception counter, still clean, papers thrown all over the room behind. An old man frozen in place on one of the waiting chairs. His fingers wrapped around the armrests wizened and black.

No oxygen, or masks, anything. A first aid kit lies in one corner emptied of all supplies.

Okay. David backs away slowly, returns to the road. Okay. If Gary's alive - when he gets to Gary - he'll know what to do. Gary always knows what to do. They'll drive out, fix Iker up, everything will be fine.

So keep running, old man.

 

*

 

He comes to a broad thoroughfare, four lanes wide overhead and crumbling. Recognises it without a thought – the M60 is hard to forget, encircling as it does most of Manchester. You always knew how close you were when you saw it from the coach. So they must be near the dead zone, if the bomb was dropped over the city centre.

He. Not they.

David limps into the next town, his breath getting shorter and shorter, wound burning up something hot. Stretford. Stretford End. More things come into view recognisable. Now he understands what Iker meant by not remembering Madrid; he doesn’t like this, the low-rising houses stripped of paint and glass, brick buildings in piles on the ground or burnt out. There are bodies here too that he doesn’t look at. No one left to clear them away.

Follow the road. Follow the road and don’t remember anything: here was Turn Moss, where they used to kick a ball on their days off. Here was Stretford Mall. If they ever went it was only for a decent chippie just outside. Here was Bridgewater Canal, leading all the way to Old Trafford. Now it’s nothing more than a sunken ditch, a bare thread of cloudy black water running through.

No Chester Road Bridge. The white arch is twisted and sheared off in the middle. "Fuck it," David mutters, bends down low, holding on to the edge of the canal with his fingers. His wound throbs more than ever before. He twists over and drops; it's only four feet, but the landing still winds him. Hauling himself up on the other side hurts even more.

But it doesn't matter, because he's almost there. Almost there. Gorse Hill, Vauxhall, the sports village.

Down Chester Road and still down. Find Gary, find a doctor, save Iker. All of this can be done. None of them are going to die. He wonders briefly what's happened to the rest of the world – is life still going on, are people still picking up the pieces, do they have running water. Is there still football on. Everything seems so isolated here, alone, as if there isn't anyone else left in the world.  

White girders appear in his vision and his breath catches.

The wreck of a supermarket and a copse of dead trees partially obscure the view, but the girders are clear as day against the dark of the sky. They're always the first things you notice, on your way there. Coming into view before anything else. He remembers the first time he'd seen them, majestic almost to the point of disbelief.

Six, seven stops. You have reached your destination.

There isn't anything else he can do but stumble closer, cutting through the ruin and across the next street. Cuts through the row of what were once red brick houses, now scorched. His feet move by themselves. All of the ache in his body seems to have vanished.

Slowly, like a magician's trick, it reveals itself. Red brick. Tinted glass. The letters _MANCHESTER UNITED_ set in a neat row beneath the girders beckoning.

It never matters how many times you visit your stadium. Your first time, your two hundredth. It always feels like going home.

He walks around it in silence. One round, slow, just looking at it. The roofs have caved in over the terraces; the girders on the East Stand are melted beyond recognition. The Trinity is gone. Dust settles over what's left of the pitch, which looks crumbled and dead through the yawning gaps in the stands. The west stand reads _STRRD E_.

Saturday, 3pm. Here are the teams, lining up in the tunnel. Here are the fans, seventy thousand of them. Here is the colour of the seats the shirts the scarves. Here is the song.

He steps onto the grass.

It's sparse, scorched, and his shoes crunch on the fragments of glass that have been swept inwards. He kicks his feet up and breaks into a slow jog, the mask heavy on his face. Shuffles to where he thought the middle of the pitch ought to be. Puts his hands on his hips and looks up.

The gaffer standing at the dugout. The banners draped on the edge of the Stretford End, fans singing _U-N-I-T-E-D._ Gary walking out in front of him. Them bloody superstitions. He'd asked Gary once if he could walk in front instead, and Gary's cheeks had flushed: what if we lose, Becks?

Home. Manchester. Living and breathing. Gary's still alive somewhere, holed up in Bury eating tinned peaches, frowning so hard at them he gets that crease in his face. It's just fucking sugar, Becks. Who the fuck invented tin cans. Why can't we open it like a coke?

David rolls up the edge of his shirt, gently peels back the bandages. The edges of the wound have bubbled and turned black.

He sets the shirt down again. Lifts his fingers and presses them against the embroidered crest, drags his grimy fingernails against every individual stitch. Feels the number heavy on his back.

Beckham. Seven. Bombing down the right wing, and Gary Neville's arriving with the overlap -

He takes off the mask and sets it down in the centre of the pitch. The first breath burns his lungs. He runs, _really_ runs, throws his legs into gear, studs thudding into the ground. Scholesy on his left, sliding the ball to him inch-perfect.

Here is the ball at his feet. Here is Gary in place, waiting without having to be told. David flicks his eyes up. Meets Gary's gaze.

They play an exchange they've played for years, taking out the defenders immediately, fourteen-year-olds at the Cliff. One-two.

David flicks the ball towards the goalposts. It floats towards the top left corner of the net, the perfect arch, practiced thousands of times with a rubber tyre and a training jersey too big for him.

And that is brilliant, struck to perfection, a David Beckham special -

He races to the corner flag, heart pounding in his chest, Gary screaming into his ear wrapped around him. Slides onto his knees, spreads his arms. Closes his eyes. Listens.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> Thanks for reading. <3 


	2. RESEARCH NOTES

TIMELINE: December 2004 - May 2005  
Title from Billy Joel's Pressure

All road names, landmarks, map things, routes, Manchester geography etc. are REAL and the result of spending too long on google maps' satellite view. I even plotted out the timings!! (Yes, this is condensed just so that the notes don't need their own chapter)  
^ I DID THIS AND THEN THEY DID ME DIRTY AND MADE ME MAKE A NEW CHAPTER ANYWAY!

\- [Sirens](https://www.thesirenboard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20098) YEAH, I CHECKED THE SIREN BOARD. [more](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/spain/articles/guernica-painting-basque-town-defied-its-past/) [sirens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_siren#Spain)  
\- [Spain/France border crossing](https://www.riviera24.it/photogallery_new/images/2016/11/riviera24-polizia-di-frontiera-330601.660x368.jpg)  
\- [Wine!](https://www.thewinecellarinsider.com/wine-topics/bordeaux-wine-buying-guide-tasting-notes-ratings/bordeaux-wine-vintage-chart/)  
\- Bixente just for my favourite bayernpotato who suggested him when I asked for a random fwenchie! [Here's a good interview](https://www.fourfourtwo.com/sg/features/big-interview-bixente-lizarazu-alex-ferguson-wanted-sign-me-it-stopped-very-quickly)  
- yup a fallout ref!!   
\- [Poitiers grottos](http://zh.poitiers-tourism.com/accueil/discovering/noree-caves.aspx)  
\- [Cars!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Citro%C3%ABn_vehicles#Recent)  
\- Chunnel entrance: [x](https://www.deplacementspros.com/photo/art/grande/24010281-26028845.jpg?v=1532526478) [x](http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/images/cms/original/c/f/8/0/7/easid-199941-media-id-6945.jpg) [x](http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/MobileSwitcher/v2/images/1553-14389697291884645530.png)  
\- [15 million is an accurate figure, fyi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel#Freight_traffic_volumes)  
\- Service Tunnel Stuff: [x](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Eurotunnel_Class_9705_-_Sortie_Tunnel_sous_la_Manche_%C3%A0_Coquelles.jpg/1200px-Eurotunnel_Class_9705_-_Sortie_Tunnel_sous_la_Manche_%C3%A0_Coquelles.jpg) [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zu_u0xDSks) [x](http://batisseurs-tunnel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1-Le-Projet-Tunnel-sous-La-Manche_C1.pdf<a%20href=)  
\- [Inside the tunnel](https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02899/tunnel_2899947k.jpg) (POINT MEDIAN IS LEGIT BUT I CAN'T FIND THE PIC ANYMORE)  
\- If the service tunnel is [50km long](https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/channel-tunnel/) and the Citroën AX's top speed is 180kph -  
\- [Folkestone entrance](http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/879237/stream_img.jpg) ( im assuming the lil tunnel at the side is the service tunnel??)  
\- U bet I checked that USA satellites pass over the UK [x](https://in-the-sky.org/satmap_worldmap.php) [x](https://www.n2yo.com/satellites/?c=US&t=country)  
\- [Southeastern's](https://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/travel-information/more-travel-help/station-information/stations/folkestone-central) the only service through Folkestone  
\- Folkestone Invicta: [x](http://footygrounds.blogspot.com/2011/10/folkestone-invicta-cheriton-road.html) [x](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3W677yWIFKk/Tp2tquavW9I/AAAAAAAACdQ/oO1kixtCwvg/s640/IMG_0688.JPG) I did, uh, check their [fixtures](http://www.folkestoneinvictafc.co.uk/fixtures-201819) to make sure they still played over winter lmao  
\- [Deepdale](https://www.pnefc.net/club/deepdale/) is the stadium of Preston North End where Becks spent a loan  
\- I just really wanted to punch Lamps after Derby, don't @ me.. in my defence I did [verify](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Footballers_from_Greater_London&pagefrom=Ikpeazu%2C+Uche%0AUche+Ikpeazu#mw-pages) that they were both considered from London / the South - the Weaker Half, obviously,  
\- [Movies in 2004](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_in_film)  
\- gunshot wounds: [x](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000737.htm%0Ahttps://www.quora.com/In-what-parts-of-the-body-can-a-person-take-a-gunshot-without-hitting-vital-parts) [x](https://www.quora.com/How-long-can-a-person-survive-without-medical-care-after-getting-shot-in-different-body-parts) [x](https://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/parts/best-place-to-get-shot1.htm) [x](http://thesurvivaldoctor.com/2012/07/26/gunshot-wounds/%0Ahttps://www.tdcaa.com/sites/default/files/page/5%20FRI%20INV%20Molina%20Gunshot%20Wounds.pdf) (graphic)  
\- [You CAN eat shit straight from the can!](https://www.chowhound.com/post/straight-eat-681121?page=2)  
\- [Becks's childhood home, Norman Road](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/david-beckham/3474133/David-Beckhams-childhood-home-attracts-offers-of-1m.html)  
\- [The North road signs](http://uk.rippachtal.de/M1/M1-1-08-425.jpg)  
\- Me googling Altrincham landmarks to find [St George's Church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_George%27s_Church,_Altrincham)  
\- Metrolink: [x](https://www.citymetric.com/sites/default/files/article_body_2018/01/mm_old.png) [x](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altrincham_Interchange#Metrolink)  
\- The airborne viruses are TB and Anthrax [x](https://www.wired.com/2006/08/the-best-deadly-poisons-ingested-or-inhaled/) [x](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anthrax/symptoms-causes/syc-20356203) [x](https://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/deadly-airborne-diseases-infographic/) [x](http://166.67.66.226/tb/FactsaboutTB.htm)  
\- [gas masks](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130830-gas-masks-syria-israel-chemical-warfare/)  
\- OT bomb damage during WWII, for reference as to what I imagine it looks like: [x](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/bomb-damaged-old-trafford-football-ground-pictured-shortly-after-the-picture-id591983058) [x](https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00689/sport-graphics-2008_689499a.jpg)  
\- [Becks commentary  
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9kRkY98Msg)\- The Becks picture is from when we came back from 3-0 down to beat Spurs 5-3, Becks scored a gorgeous goal (as always) and it's the image I remember most of him at United

Because Ao3 is a lil bitch and made me move the notes to another chapter anyway, I uh went a lil bit crazy n scored the whole thing:

Beginning: In the House - In a Heartbeat  
Gary's call: ALL THE STONE ROSES  
Thinking about Manchester: Love Will Tear Us Apart  
Driving through France / the chateau: Fake Plastic Trees  
Bixente: Sunday Morning  
The Chunnel: Saturn  
Bang: Sing  
The Chunnel (2): Run  
Folkestone/Invicta: Deep Blue Day  
Aftermath of fight: Dead in the Water  
England.: 2 + 2 = 5 // Atmosphere  
Iker death: The Parting Glass  
Becks ronnin around: Perfect Day  
OT: I Wanna Be Adored + There is a Light  
Credits Rolling: England I Still Believe + Half the World Away

thanks for reading 2.0 thru ALL THIS CRAP <3


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